


Mate in Three

by ForASecondThereWedWon



Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [3]
Category: The Queen's Gambit (TV)
Genre: Domestic, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Living Together, Resolved Sexual Tension, Seduction, Sexual Tension, deviates from canon in ep. 6: Adjournment, rated for sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27661517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForASecondThereWedWon/pseuds/ForASecondThereWedWon
Summary: It's not a matter ofifBeth can seduce Benny, it's a matter of when.
Relationships: Beth Harmon/Benny Watts
Series: Oh my god, they were checkmates... [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2020483
Comments: 39
Kudos: 399





	Mate in Three

**Author's Note:**

> _She said love don't come easy/It's a game of give and take_ \- The Supremes

The first thing Beth decides is that it doesn’t matter whether Benny knows she’s doing it on purpose. Not for a moment does she believe herself to be wilier than him, therefore her attempts to seduce him cannot go unnoticed. She’s already revealed her intentions—at the bar in Ohio—and he’s made his own position clear. Both halves of it. He wouldn’t have needed to put an unambiguous ban on sex if it weren’t at least partly for his own benefit, as a reminder to keep their relationship professional, trainer and trainee. She still smiles to herself over how he reacted when she swept the hair from his eyes. All he’s done is silently place a handicap on her play: she’ll have to accomplish it all without touching him.

The drive to New York is for revision, repetition, exercises, and, amusingly, bonding. Benny’s still Benny behind the wheel, but this is something more straightforward than playing Benny Watts for fans and the press. He’s at ease. He even unstraps the knife from his belt ahead of them setting off.

“For comfort,” he claims, explaining that he doesn’t want the sheath digging into his leg the entire trip.

“Does this mean you don’t believe you need to protect yourself from _me_?” Beth jokingly inquires.

He holds her teasing stare a second too long and clears his throat as he redirects his attention to the road ahead of them.

It takes her a couple of days to find her feet after arriving at Benny’s apartment. She’s never been to New York and the noises outside are as jarring as the grim interior. Her host trailing the end of that open robe around feels like the equivalent of the smug smirks some of Beth’s earliest opponents wore when they mistakenly supposed they’d made a brilliant move against her. She wiped those smiles off easily enough; proving that Benny’s no match for her shouldn’t be any tougher.

Once she adapts to the lack of natural light inside the space and having to blow up her bed every evening, Beth is ready to commence. Benny’s already training her, started the first morning, but now she shifts to playing a simultaneous. This is the game beneath the game. Sure that she can win, what she’s most curious to discover is how many moves it’ll take. Though the apartment is unelaborate and their lives within the unadorned rooms routine, she finds opportunities. Poverty, followed by the monk-like existence at Methuen—every space communal, precious few meaningful possessions scattered between nearly two dozen girls—has made her wickedly resourceful.

Taking responsibility for feeding them is straightforward. It makes sense for her to buy the groceries as a way of repaying him for letting her stay, plus her numerous pointed looks upon opening a cupboard or the refrigerator to expose the slim pickings have Benny half-convinced before Beth even asks to take over food shopping duties. The only things he’s really attached to (besides coffee) are his morning eggs. She notices. She plots before falling asleep, unfurling scenarios in her mind as she stares at the ceiling and folds her hands over the placket of her satiny pink pajamas. Then, she starts eating his eggs.

“Why do you buy all this other stuff if that’s what you want to eat?” Benny questions, standing next to her at the stove, using a greasy fork to gesture towards the egg she’s frying.

Beth shrugs, surveying as he goes back to scraping at the bacon where it’s sticking to his pan. Even now, his upper body is bare under the robe and she’s suppressing the urge to warn him about the pain of hot splatter. She transfers her weight onto the foot farthest from him and watches the bacon sizzle.

“Maybe I just like eggs,” she says.

And, truly, she doesn’t mind them. However, Beth, who has preferred her eggs scrambled since childhood (a common breakfast at the orphanage and the most tolerable meal they offered), unfailingly prepares every egg at Benny’s over easy.

They take their positions across the table and the board from each other, plates on their laps, coffee always just shy of being knocked to the ground by their propped elbows. She lets him ramble. He seems to enjoy beginning every session with a little chess history—and, of course, the Benny Watts perspective on it. Finally, he moves his first piece with a decisive _tap_ , but Beth concentrates on her egg. She splits it with the side of her fork and quickly moves the bite to her mouth.

Confused by her failure to respond to his opening move, Benny looks up. Beth feels immense satisfaction in witnessing the impatient gaze he shoots at her eyes melt as it drops to the yellow yolk dribbling from the corner of her lips. She wipes at it with feigned embarrassment, as though she hadn’t been pressing the egg against the roof of her mouth with her tongue until she felt the gush.

He blinks and shifts in his seat.

“You going to play or what?”

“Yes.”

Benny wins the first match by too much because she was distracted, but Beth’s loss is bearable to her. She gained ground in the other game. Although he recovered promptly, what she now thinks of as the Egg Variation did get his attention.

When devising the second move of her endgame, she thinks of Harry. His love for her was as plain as the nose on his face, but she suspects that this next tactic will work just as well on someone far less blatant about their feelings. Watching a woman dance must be where concealed lust and transparent devotion meet. Just as she stripped Benny of his queen at the Ohio tournament, she aims to strip him of the persistent disinterest in her that hangs from him like one of his necklaces.

He has a small radio. She’s only ever seen him listen to it in the morning, either sitting on the steps across the room from where she sleeps (presumably trying not to wake her with the noise) or at the table while she’s frying up her provocative prop/breakfast. One night, Beth waits for Benny to turn in, then grabs the radio. She has it on low at first, swaying her head side to side. But when she starts inflating her mattress, the thump of the pump depressing drowns out the music. Well, there’s only one thing for her to do about that.

Eyes on the closed bedroom door, Beth twists the dial to increase the volume. She swiftly sets the radio on the floor and places her foot on the pump, heart fleetly beating. Benny doesn’t come out, so she finishes her task, anticipation mounting. She adjusts the volume again.

Because they left right from Ohio, she traveled with a limited wardrobe. Taking pleasure in both strategizing and dressing herself well, Beth made sure to have the correct clothes clean on the correct day—including today. Especially today. That’s why, when the music sufficiently interferes with his attempt to get to sleep, Benny storms out only to halt in his tracks at the sight of Beth dancing, the navy skirt she wore the day before she trounced him twirling around her thighs.

“Sorry,” she says when she catches him staring. She’s grinning. “We sit all day and I… needed to move.”

“Right _now_?” he asks, crossing his arms over his bare chest. He taps a finger against his arm and she notices he’s removed his bracelet and ring. It’s oddly intimate to view him without jewellery.

“Well, you don’t give me any other time.”

“That’s because I’m training you to be a chess champion, not a ballerina.”

Benny tilts to rest his shoulder against the wall. He’s still watching her and she’s still dancing, wiggling her shoulders and hips in place, though no longer hopping around. Just meeting his gaze has her out of breath. _Do something_ , she dares him with her eyes.

“Relax, Benny,” she impishly commands. “I promise this won’t make me worse at chess.”

“Will it make you better?”

Beth shuns his challenging tone, swinging around to put her back to him and dancing more vigorously. She almost thinks she hears the smack of his bare feet crossing the floor to join her, but when she turns, Benny’s about to step back into his bedroom. He stops himself though, hand braced flat on the wall. She quits dancing as, slowly, he looks sideways at her. His eyes race over her faster than she can be sure of what he’s taking in. Her skirt and her plan, or just her noisy presence, keeping him awake? As he turns his head and disappears for the night, she spots the way he smiles to himself. She wants to drag him back out here. Instead, with a sigh, she shuts off the radio.

She can feel it—she can always feel a victory. Her self-assurance in this talent has never been rattled. When Benny beat her in Vegas, it didn’t surprise her. No, she watched it coming from half a dozen moves off, which was enough to lend his win the same terrifying inevitability as the oncoming truck that met Beth’s mother’s car on a bridge and killed her on impact. Beth was as incapable of escaping defeat at the US Open as she was of grabbing the wheel from the backseat and steering her mother to safety. The sense of an approaching victory is free of what-ifs and regrets. It simply is.

Following the employment of the Egg Variation and the midnight dance, she’s certain the seduction requires a single move more. And she’s US Champion Beth Harmon. She has just the thing.

The abominable dearth of privacy where the shower is concerned makes it an obvious choice. Too obvious? In her mind, no more obvious than engaging Benny in a trading of queens in Ohio after being defeated by him in that same manner in Las Vegas. His ego made him believe he was invincible, blind to the fact that Beth would never make the same mistake twice. Equally keen to avoid a blunder here, she gives the backdrop of the strike that will be her last a good test run. And tries not to enjoy it too much. (Outwardly.)

Usually, she collects her clothes for the day—or pajamas, when she showers at night—and places them next to the shower. Close enough to reach, far enough to avoid the rogue spray that makes it past the curtain. Hidden by that same curtain, Beth towels off, then sticks an arm out to snatch up her clothing and dress in everything but shoes before stepping out. During her test run, Beth _forgets_ to bring her clothes. She dries herself like normal, then, when she hears the door to Benny’s bedroom snap open, presents herself with his threadbare towel twisted around her, the end tucked in beneath her arm. She blinks at him as though startled and laughs with modest embarrassment.

“Forgot my—”

“Oh,” he says and steps back, practically _trips_ back, slamming the door.

Beth waltzes across the room, head held high to breathe the air of imminent conquest. She almost begins to hum. What must he be thinking as he keeps himself caged in his room? Is he frozen or pacing? Running his fingers through his hair or his palm over his mouth? Has he flung himself to the far back of his bedroom, as far from her as he can get, or does he wait just inside the door, battling every second against the compulsion to wrench it wide?

“Just you wait,” she singsongs under her breath, smiling as she wrings water from her hair and pops on a headband.

After the trial comes the play for all the marbles (as her mother would’ve said). Beth doesn’t wait, doesn’t grace Benny with any time to cool down and get a handle on his refusal to acknowledge her as a potential sexual partner. The very next time she showers, she forgets the towel.

“Benny?” she shouts.

She’s knows he’s preoccupied; he was reading a book—on chess, what else—when he retreated to his bedroom for her privacy. His belated answering shout confirms that she’s only won a piece of his attention. Beth bites her lips together to discourage herself from smiling.

“…Yeah?”

“Could you come out here? I need your help.”

Controlling her expression, Beth pokes her head around the edge of the shower curtain.

“Well,” she hears him say loudly as his door opens, “that’s the first time you’ve said—”

His eyes scan the room for her and, locating her, he sighs. She gives him a delicate wave, just a fluttering of her fingers.

“Hi, Benny.”

“Yeah,” he responds heavily. “Hi.”

“I forgot my towel.”

“I bet you did.”

“And? Are you going to get it for me? I’m getting cold.”

She sees him slide his lower jaw to the side in frustration and contemplation, but, raising his eyebrows in a quick flick, he nods. The towel isn’t hard to find; she left it perfectly visible on purpose so he wouldn’t have to waste time searching. He walks towards her, shifting his gaze from her face to the floor and back. She understands the look—it’s that of a person trying to find a way out. They’ve alternated wearing it when sitting across from each other at a chessboard. He stops in front of the shower and extends the towel towards her, wearing a different expression: a man accepting that he’s been outmaneuvered.

“Thanks.”

Her arm shoots out as she takes it from him and snaps the curtain shut again. The reaction is clearly not what he was expecting because she hears him chuckle to himself.

“You’re cruel, Beth.”

She frowns, drying herself with unprecedented speed. She can see his silhouette through the curtain.

“How so?”

“You finally get me right where you want me and then you decide to toy with me.”

The sound of his feet scuffing across the floor reaches her as he walks away. Draped in the towel, she jerks the curtain open and chases him in stuttering steps. He turns and she freezes. Instinct makes her cross her arms behind her back, a habit from childhood that Mrs. Deardorff once told her to break as it made her appear secretive. Which she was.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had to stretch it a moment longer. I don’t know what made me do it.”

“I do,” Benny tells her, squaring himself to face her fully. He grins. “Revenge.”

“Revenge? But I already—”

“Sure, you took the title from me, but you never got me back for discovering the flaw in your game against Beltik.”

Beth opens her mouth to argue only to close it again in a smile.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I am, you know. Some of the time.”

He doesn’t disguise how his gaze rides a water droplet running down the side of her neck, over her collarbone, and into the towel after following the swell of her breast. She lets him look, then extends her hand, businesslike.

“Do you resign?”

Benny smiles and grips her hand.

“You play ruthlessly.”

“I play to win,” she corrects.

His fingers tighten around her hand and he tugs her in. Their first kiss has the force of a merciless endgame assault—true to form for them both. The noise that escapes her as the pressure of his mouth on hers tips her head back farther calls out to him. He clutches her against him and she feels the imprint of his hand distinctly through the towel. Unable to push him, she pulls instead, guiding him around until she advances on his bedroom backwards, fingers hooked in the neck of his black t-shirt.

In lieu of a king, Beth topples Benny—straight into his bed.


End file.
